


One of Them

by coolohoh



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-09-23 08:30:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9648110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolohoh/pseuds/coolohoh
Summary: Sho thought he would never become 'one of them'.





	

Hi.

My name is Sakurai Sho.

I’m one of them.

Them? Who?

Well. One of THOSE people. Those people who attended university. Graduated with a degree. And ended up doing something hell ya completely unrelated for a living.

Yeah. One of those people. Who wasted their degree. Like totally.

I used to really despise those people. Then… It happened to me.

Let me start from the beginning.

I was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, to an upper class family. My parents are well… Strict people. They expected the best of me in everything. School work. Grades. Club activities. Everything. Considering how they are really successful people themselves, I guess it’s no surprise that they expected the same from me, their eldest son. I tried to take it in my stride. To do my best. To be the best. And somehow, I guess I made it.

Keio University.

I made it in.

And I made it out.

With good grades to boot too.

And what did I study, you ask?

Well. I did economics. Because it seemed like a useful subject to study, because my mom hoped that maybe I could join her dad’s company and take over it someday. And because I was somewhat interested in it.

As I was studying, I looked around at my friends and senpais who graduated. A number of them found jobs in good companies. But many of them took strange routes. One of them decided to quit her job in a well known company to sell her own homemade cosmetics. At the loss of a crapton of income. Another started selling insurance. Yet another worked in a clerical position in a pharmacy.

Why the hell in this earth do you need a Keio degree to sell insurance? Or be a clerk? Jobs that mere high school students could apply for and do. Why? Why were they doing these jobs? Totally unrelated to their degrees, wasting their degrees. I didn’t understand.

Then, came my turn to graduate.

Top of the class, I was. A job in a great company.

But then, that was when I realised… I hated my life.

Working 12 hours a day, with no goal in sight. My work was meaningless. I didn’t even have a clue why I had to do the crap I was made to do. The leadership structure was stiff and unyielding. The system was stupid and inefficient. Yet nobody ever listen or cared about what newbies had to say. I was a junior and juniors have no say. I learnt to stop caring. To bother bothering. Learnt helplessness. I was exactly like that. Then, the top management changed. Things got worst. Like, a whole fucking lot worst.

CCTVs started popping up everywhere, monitoring everyone and making sure that they were at their desk. We had to clock our lunch hours. Clocking in and out was already done, but clocking lunch hours as well? Now this was new. They even had CCTVs installed in the break rooms to make sure nobody took long breaks. Wherever we went, Big Brother was watching. Watching. Watching. It didn’t matter if you took 12 hours to do work that could be done in 2 hours. All they cared was that you were at your desk, working. What kind of fucked up system is this? How utterly, disgustingly inefficient! I started hating my life. My job. Myself. I was getting fucking depressed. I was so stressed. I couldn’t sleep properly. I couldn’t spend my weekends in peace (more overtime work, duh!) I couldn’t even spend my days off in peace. I was constantly living in fear. Fear of my bosses. Fear of my colleagues. Fear of getting more work. Fuck. I couldn’t even switch jobs because I was so strung up I could barely articulate myself in interviews.

I was stuck.

I asked around. My peers and senpais, who were working in other companies.

Turns out that it’s similar everywhere. In Japan at least. In those companies in my field of work. What kind of twisted society this is? I don’t know. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I threw in the towel and I quit.

I didn’t dare tell my parents that I was jobless.

I was staying on my own already by then, so they didn’t know.

You’d think that with my high income I could live off my savings for a while… But well, I’m ashamed to say that I barely have any savings. Because I spent a lot. On food. And gadgets. Two of my favourite things. Boy, did I love my gadgets. I love all things tech really. And that was when I realised that perhaps I should have studied computer science instead of economics in the first place.

I signed up for free online courses, learning programming and whatever tech stuff I could. I started writing. I started a blog. Then a second. And then another. I started making youtube videos. I put ads on my blogs and videos so that I could earn some money, but at just a few cents a day, I could hardly live off those. As my bank account got slimmer and slimmer, I was finally forced to ask for help from my parents.

It was hard, telling them that I’d quit my job two months ago. And that I really didn’t want to work in a company again. My parents were furious, and adamant that I start applying for jobs. I told them that I wanted to change fields. They were worried. Understandably so. I was almost 30. I wasn’t a young kid anymore. I was getting old. I should be finding a girlfriend and settling down soon. I didn’t have the heart to tell my parents that I was gay...

In the end, mom bailed me out. She paid for a year’s worth of rent, and gave me some pocket money, before saying ever to expect money from her again. It was basically her way of saying ‘You have one year to do whatever you want to do, but one year only.’ Of course, I still need money for food, but I could do some part time job for that while deciding on my next move.

I decided to throw in my all in writing. Writing blogs, and writing books. Ebooks. On Amazon. I read that people were earning a lot of money off it, so I tried. I never imagined that I could write a whole book by myself, but I guess you can do amazing things when backed against the wall. I wrote random stuff… Crap, in my really honest opinion. But people bought it anyway. And so I wrote another book. And another.

It was incredible. I was making enough to feed myself. I was still ‘working’ all day but I enjoyed what I was doing. Best of all, there were not CCTVs behind me.

Finally, I could smile again.

I’m still making way less than I was before. I’m still writing more books and trying hard to get my monthly income to a level where I can foot my rent by myself because there’s just 6 months of rent free living left. It’s going to be hard, I really hope I don’t have to crawl back to my parent’s home and ask for help again… But heck, I’ve only got one life. And I’m not going to spend it in some company, pretending to do work.

Yup. I’ve become one of them. I’m wasting my degree.

Then again, maybe not. I can write about economic related articles. I can comment on how tech companies are doing now, because of my interest and knowledge in tech, but also because of my economics background. I’m sure my university experience will help me out in surprising, unexpected ways.

Now, I look at those salarymen in their suits and ties and smile.

I’m one of them. Not.  



End file.
